The reason I’m musing about tabloid drivel, Mark Sanford and the naked Mayor, is that it’s hard to gather my thoughts. I just finished Barton Gellman’s Angler, and I’m a third of the way through Jane Mayer’s The Dark Side. After four plus years of following these stories like a soap opera junkie, the reality of it all is unavoidable in these two powerfully researched and well thought-out books. And the reality of it all is almost more than I can easily tolerate. One can read history with a distance – perspecaciously. These stories are still too close for that kind of editorial thinking. I find myself reading a few pages, then walking around looking for a diversion of some kind. Then, like the moths on our porch, I fly back toward the lights…I doubt that any of us yet realize how profoundly these first eight years of the century will color and recolor our future…
I think if my memory serves me the authors Mayer and Gellman both went to Oxford . Mayer’s grandfather was a famous historian and her great great grandfather was part owner of the now defunct Lehman brothers. Gellman has 2 Pulitzer Prizes. I suppose you could call these authors the Seymour Hersh, David Halbersrom’s of the 21st century. I know ‘The Dark Side” is hard to read but I think it’s important that many people learn how bad the Bush years really were for our country and the many innocent men who have suffered. I hope President Obama read the book and If he did, I would hope that he would do the right thing whatever that might be.
I wonder if Liz Cheney has read these books and how she deals with it.
She was quoted yesterday about her father’s book, which she’s helping him research and write, that it is going to be an invaluable look at all the important decisions during this period. She also said that her father is “a great American.”